Quote from vorzo:
Jack,
Thank you for your comments. Looking forward to your organized notes
My questions:
What do you mean by "tape moves to 15 min"?
What is C&R?
dawg, what prior low/high do you look at before taking a trade (day's, last 30 min etc)?
A preemptive note on the the scaling of my charts Jack - the scale of 10 makes some charts unusable (so flat you can't see anything). It all depends on the size of the window. Now a scale based on a percentage of the index value makes more sense, for instance always having the same percentace spanning the price axis - I aim for 50% which for NQ is ~ 50 points on the 5 min chart. For longer/shorter time frames, one would have to increase/decrease it.
Thanks and good trading.
ps: As I'm typing this there is a nice rally forming in NQ on low volume - intermediate traders are riding it perhaps.
Dawg's response is right on.
You can also see the transition going on for dawg. The market is better and he is getting more of the trends by the wyas (skills) he is now using. I think it is great that Dawg can tell you what to do and it is a terrific thing also that you can understand how the comments are very focussed.
Dawg is running weeks at a money velocity of about 4 points/contract a day now and we are into this for a month or so.
With trading on several markets (European, Aussie, and US) we can see that there is a transition that takes a matter of a few weeks to be running at an inital money velocity.
Every market has strong potential. We are terminating many aspects that cause losses. and now, through repetition, the trading day is becoming clearer and more routine.
This is where we begin to start anticipating from the vantage point of the present where things are under control.
Not jumping in too soon is happeniong with several of you and you are advising others who still do. They will follow your lead. Volume not sustaining is a major additional helper on discerning a "flaw" or "failure".
Later people say "Why didn't you tell us this in the beginning? The objective is to make money in a sustained way and then to continue to build facility and confidence.
Focus on rockets going into congestion at the sides of the S/R band. At first you exit on signal. Then you see days after day certain repetitive partial day sequences. AM, midday, and pm.
you now can rank pars of he day fr making profits. Top is AM; bottom is midday.
So we get set up in AM after synch and we see volume always sustains the moves.
By 11:15 you have one or two trades in. the first trade sets the S or R for the day. (Support or Resistance). The second trade if it occurs is because the first trade was slower than ususal and a reverse can occur. Otherwise you see highly volatile whipsaw.
Now we are getting to a place where we see trend endings. We can add to this view the consideration of getting into what follows the end of a trend. When we see we are on S or R, then we can consider trading the congestion by going against the whipsaw of congestion.
By learning the wash trade on all failures to trend. You gain a facilty and skill that eliminates being whipsawed and also concurrently allows you to gain the skill to be on the correct side of whipsaws.
So many people never get over being whipsawed. Here is why. They go out on stops as a modus. You can look at thread after thread. Look at the swing trade exit thread started by trader fader (?) We are breaking a habit of going out on stops by using signals to exit. We are starting to log stops, though and there are many reasons. We are bringing into the picture price formations and the significant signals within each formation. These are the stop log entries.
I get into trouble here a little. A log entry is sometimes misunderstood as a market entry. The phrase I use "potential stop" in place of log entry also causes some problems. Bear with me here. It does come out on the wash. I have rows of three ring binders that have completed logs. I will learn to scan and annotate and attach them as time passes. We can use these to cover the bases faster instead of waiting for all the events to occur.
Between logging and pint 1,2,3 and washing, you get to a point of consciousness then skill that you can slalom whipsaws on the right side. What actually happens mentally, then emotionally, is that this place allows you to see what it is like to make money.
By going to this trading level with one contract initially instead of piling on contracts doing rockets with multiples of initial capital, is that you still keep your edge for developing skill instead of just being rich.
The common tone of many traders is to jump into a whole system and try to make money. So they trade on paper and get to a plce where they are very deceptive. They feel so strongly that they know something. They are playing with Mulligans all the time. They slip and slide with their perception of timing. some people have determined that you will not do as well with real trading as paper trading. I feel that the transition and first real effort always end in failure to preserve capital. They have to refinance and start over by repeating the mistaken process over and over.
there are posts in ET that tell newbie to just tough it out for ....... The usual word is years. Our contrast with that is getting to an av of 4 points a day in a matter of weeks.
This plateau of rockets (fast pace) and sideling is very protective of your emotions and money. The discussion of entering, one line, both lines, end of 5 min bar. WOW. This is consciousness being established. Notice the high ratio of win profits to wash losses. One is going up and the other is declining. This is a feeling thing. Feeling like things are improving and advancing.
What if in a short while the trades go all along the trend? What if we slalom on congestion?
We actually have the tools and we are sharpening them up day by day on this plateau.